At American University, incidentally, Kuznick teaches the “path-breaking course Oliver Stone’s America.” On Showtime, Stone presents Peter Kuznick’s America. They have got a circle of love kind of thing going between them. In any event, cultural artifacts such as the book and the series have done a lot of damage. It is a mistake to ignore them.

The title of the book notwithstanding, historian Ronald Radosh notes that it serves up “A story told before.” Radosh writes: “An examination of the first four episodes and the accompanying 750-page book—The Untold History of the United States (Gallery Books), obviously written by Kuznick, although Stone’s name appears first—reveals them to offer not an untold story, but the all-too-familiar Communist and Soviet line on America’s past as it developed in the early years of the Cold War.” Twice-Told Tales would be more like it.

In the video below, Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd interview Radosh about the Showtime series. The video is a terrific companion to Radosh’s linked Weekly Standard article. Radosh et al. condemn CBS for broadcasting the Showtime series. Their condemnation necessarily applies as well to the book. The book is published by Gallery Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. Publishing giant Simon & Schuster is also owned by CBS. CBS has earned the catcalls twice over.

In any event, the video gets to the point with astonishing speed and ferocity. Highly recommended.